In my 10th grade English class, I would like to
create a blog for discussion topics for students and building community. I
would use the community building aspect to build the basic blog skills and
familiarity with accessing the blog. Then, I will add discussion topics that
allow students to respond to a content related topic and respond to each other’s
ideas.
I would like to begin by establishing a blog that shares the
course syllabus, classroom expectations, and class work and homework
assignments. This would allow for increased communication with parents and
students and provide a resource for students who need an alternative method for
keeping track of and turning in assignments. I would set up a separate blog for
each of the 3 sections I teach in order to keep the assignments and due dates
clear for each class. It will also help keep me organized. This part of the
blog will allow for some training with access and communication. We will use
some class time to access the blog and make sure that all students are familiar
with accessing and navigating the blog independently.
A few weeks into the semester, I will add a discussion
component to the blog. I will post discussion questions/topics/prompts on the
blog and ask students to respond to the prompts as well as to each other. I
will provide students with a rubric so that they have a clear understanding of
the expectations. We will also complete a practice activity using the rubric to
score anonymous blog postings. The discussion prompts I will use will relate
directly to the content we are covering. I would like to use application,
analysis, and extension questions as prompts so that students are extending
their knowledge to develop new understanding about content. This may include
literature, grammar, or the writing process.
Using the blog to discuss extension, application, and
analysis questions will enhance the students’ learning through increased access
to higher level thinking questions with the support of additional responses
from classmates. I hope that it will develop a sense of community within the
classes as students extend their interactive learning outside the classroom.
This extends our class time beyond the 83 minutes in the school schedule and
eliminates some of the time pressures that the school schedule creates. It also
creates rich, meaningful “homework” assignments that would replace worksheets
and rote practice activities. The blog would also be a great opportunity to
work on communication and writing skills. I find that my students do very
little writing and therefore struggle with communicating effectively in
writing. If they become engaged in the use of the blog, the significant
increase in the amount of writing they do will likely have a positive impact on
their writing skills.
Ellen:
ReplyDeleteThis sounds like a great idea. We have something similar within our school district called school fusion. It is not widely used though and is more of a place for parents to locate contact information. With your blog would you factor blog participation into your overall grade system? Also do you have issues of students who lack access to internet and computers? Is so how do you plan to support them?
Hi Jaime,
ReplyDeleteI would likely provide some classtime for blogging so that students who do not have outside access or transportation to stay after school would be able to contribute since I would be including it in their grades. I will likely grade most blog posts for participation, but will be providing feedback on writing to students individually. I also plan to participate in the blog to help promote thoughtful discussion.
Ellen
Hi Ellen,
ReplyDeleteI think you have a great start planned out for your class blogs. I also think it's a good idea to start small, like with your introductory blog exercise where students will have a chance to navigate the blog before actually making posts.
Have you thought about your blog policies yet? Will Richardson mentioned several suggestions including, "Regardless of how you start using Weblogs with students, make sure that students, parents, and even administrators are clear about the expectations and the reasoning behind it" (Richardson, 2010). Following a link provided in Will's book, I found Bud Hunt's wiki, "Bud the Teacher's Wiki," which has many great resources to use when getting started with a class blog. In particular, the "Sample Blog Acceptable Use Policy" has a good sample and lot of discussion that follows where others have given opinions. I'll add the link below for Bud's wiki; It's easy to navigate and you shouldn't have a problem locating the information that you might find useful.
I hope the project is a success!
Jeremy
Resources:
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Hunt, B. (May, 2011). "Bud the Teacher's Wiki." Retrieved from http://www.budtheteacher.com/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page
Hi Jeremy,
DeleteThanks for the resource! I know that I need to establish a policy for blog use in my classes, but had not yet gotten to that point. This looks like a great model.
Ellen
Ellen,
ReplyDeleteIt sounds like you have put a great deal of thought into your plan for the incorporation of blogging into your curriculum this year. I am especially interested in your idea of having your students post anonymously at first so that they may become accustomed to using the rubric to guide their writing. I can easily visualize a lesson in which the class evaluates examples of posts that did and did not receive full credit. Students could identify the strengths of the high-scoring post and offer constructive suggestions to improve the writing of the post that did not meet the rubric’s criteria. In my fifth-grade classroom, we sometimes do this with writing samples, but we use writing from another fifth-grade teacher’s room so that students are not embarrassed by having their work critiqued. While some of your high school students may be mature enough to handle having their work analyzed by their classmates, you could also use examples from your other sections if you are worried about hurting your students’ feelings.
In addition, I think it is wise of you to begin the year by establishing a class blog to highlight the syllabus, expectations, and assignments. In his book, Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts, and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms, Will Richardson suggests, “Just as writing teachers should write, literature teachers should read, teachers who use blogs should, well, use blogs” (Richardson, 2010, p. 43). I think that your practice in the creation and updating of the blog will become a resource once you move onto expecting your students to do the same. Your experience, along with that gained through the maintenance of this blog, will provide you with a practical knowledge of the process of blogging and troubleshooting any problems that may arise. I wish you luck with your blogging, and I may have to “borrow” your idea of the anonymous blog post to show rubric use!
Liza
References
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Hi Liza,
DeleteThe annonymous blog posts I use as models of what to and what not to do may also come from the web and not be students at my school at all. This may help eliminate the embarrassment of any students.I think that using blogs now is also great practice for the implementation in the classroom. By getting more comfortable with the technology ahead of time, I am more likely to find success when I implement with my students.
Ellen
Ellen,
ReplyDeleteWill you use a rubric to grade your students? What would that look like? I often like to use a self graded rubric and I think I would in this case because it gives ownership to the students.
Melissa
Hi Melissa,
DeleteI am planning to use a rubric with my students that includes scales for appropriate responses, insightful comments, and control of language. I usually use a rubric generating website to create the rubrics. I like students to self-evaluate with rubrics on most assignments and would likely do the same thing with the blog posts. I usually use both the self-graded rubric and my rating with the rubric to grade teh student. I do think it is important for the students get teacher feedback, particularly with writing. Many of my students struggle with the basic conventions of writing and control of language. They are not able to identify these errors in their own work or the work of peers. I often run "writing workshop" with my students so that we can look at errors in individual or small groups and work on correcting/improving the writing together (instead of just telling them how to do it).
Ellen
Since in a later comment I talked about the need to add links and use my blog to be more interactive, I have included the link to RubiStar, a rubric generator that I have often used in the past. It is an easy to use tool. Enjoy!
Deletehttp://rubistar.4teachers.org/index.php
Ellen,
ReplyDeleteYou have a lot of great ideas and I think it is wise to integrate blogs into the classroom slowly. This order of operations is very similar to the way I incorporated blogging into my classes a few years ago. Something that became very tedious and time-consuming was updating the weekly schedule. It started with just listing homework, but eventually turned into writing full paragraphs for each day that included classwork and objectives, as well. With three different preps, I found myself spending way too much time updating my blog just with the weekly overview. It would have been much easier to just post my entire lesson plans at the beginning of each week. Having lessons and homework online for every class is something that some schools in my area are moving toward. Does your school have any kind of similar online forum?
I am very pleased that you find it beneficial to incorporate more writing into your course. Writing across the curriculum is always a good thing! In this case, “blogging across the curriculum offers students and teachers not only the ability to infuse writing into all disciplines, it facilitates connections in ways that plain paper can not” (Richardson, 2010). Your students may also be able to leave feedback for each other, which should make them all more mindful of their quality of writing. As you incorporate more writing (or, I should say, blogging), remember that “the process starts with reading,” (Richardson, 2010) and including articles and links to other written works on your blogs will also help your students become better writers and communicators.
Best of luck with your endeavor!
Resources:
Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms (3rd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.
Hi Heather,
DeleteMy school has an optional teacher website where teachers can post information, policies, and assignments for their course. As far as I know, this website does not have blogging capability. I can see how keeping detailed, current information for each of your classes could be overwhelming. This may be a great way to incorporate students in the future. An example of this was provided in November's account of the calculus teacher who had a different student each day who was responsible for posting the notes from that day's class to the blog (November, 2008). You could have students post the classwork, homework, and notes from that day to the blog on a rotating schedule. This may be a great way to occupy one of the "busier" students in your class, provide a special opportunity for a student that struggles to participate, or provide a meaningful activity for any of the other students.
I thnk the thing I will struggle with the most, both with students and myself, is incorporating articles and links in the blogs. I tend to use blogging for more of the chatty, journal type experiences and need to branch out from that to make it more meaningful.
Ellen
Source:
November, A. (2008). Web literacy for educators, Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.